     I've just returned from a special couple of days spent with friends, old and new. As the guest speaker for a women's "Harvest Tea" event, I was privileged to share all the delights of their company, the hospitality of my host and hostess and the homemade goodies that come with such a gathering. I can say the time away was perfect with one, actually two, exceptions. Both involved travelling to and from the event.
         When I say that I drove alongside the West Coast, I mean on a highway perched parallel to the contours of the Pacific shoreline. It's beautiful. Trees and bushes embellish the sides of the road. The pavement is well maintained. You'd think I'd have nothing but ecstatic sighs of delight. The problem is that between the extremities of those 84 kilometres (52 miles), nausea-inducing curves result in speed limits that vary from 30 kilometres per hour up to 80 kph, over and over again. Winding around massive rocks, I can't bring myself to round off those figures: speed limits go from 18.6411 miles per hour to 49.70970 miles per hour, leaving hardly enough time for my morning eggs to slide smoothly from the bottom to the top of my stomach and back again. Everything within me cried out for the "ironed" highways of the prairies, flat and straight.
         Travelling on the ferry that links the two highways segments between where I was and where I was going, I thought about the trips we often made from the village where we lived to the major centres of Saskatchewan; for a good part of the way, nary a curve could be found and the occasional hill was a landmark.
         "So much like life," I mused. "It's been in the most difficult times and places that I've experienced the grace of God most profoundly."
